


PBRT Gives Me Migraines

by Omnibard



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Physical Mutations, unhelpful x-gene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6835945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnibard/pseuds/Omnibard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mutant discusses how she handles her mutation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	PBRT Gives Me Migraines

People don’t really talk anymore.  I remember when I was younger, before everything started _changing so fast_ , that people used to talk.  Over coffee.  But now people don’t talk.  They stare at their cell phones, texting or browsing or liking.

Even when they communicate, they don’t use real words.  They use acronyms for efficiency: _lol, wtf, IDC, IDK, IIRC, FWIW, AFAIK, DIY, TL;DR…_   Acronyms give me headaches in general.

Well, _life_ gives me headaches any more, now that everything has changed.  Now that _I’ve_ changed…

It’s the same old story, I guess.  How it happens, right?  You go through puberty and your body changes and… sometimes it changes more than other people’s.  That’s when you know for sure.  That’s when you know you’re a mutant.  It’s so _funny_ , isn’t it?  It’s like plague, or getting eaten by a shark—that terrible _thing_ that won’t ever happen to you or anyone you _really know_.  It’s just the stuff that’s on the news sometimes while you’re sketching or making grilled cheese in the kitchen; like it happens on a whole different world.

Turns out that it _does_.  Being a mutant means a whole different life, a whole double world on this one poor little planet that just can’t seem to support both.

Some people are luckier than others.  Some get changes they can hide, or changes that are useful.  Some don’t.  Like me.  The headaches started.  They got bad.  My girlfriends and I joked that my _brain cramps_ were payment for having super easy periods.  But then I started blacking out.  Then the trips to the ER.  And the MRIs.  They found these _huge lumps in my brain_.  So they put me in for surgery.

But the lumps weren’t in my brain.  They were over my skull, and with the first incision, they _burst like bone zits_ , scalping me in an instant and injuring two doctors in seconds.  The next thing I ever knew was waking up handcuffed to my gurney.  I asked what the _hell_ was going on.  Nobody would answer me, nobody would even _look_ at me.  Not even my parents.   _Especially_ not my parents.  But that night I was able to drag my gurney to the bathroom to look _myself_ in the face.

Meaty, twisting tentacles writhed out the back of my head where my hair used to be.  At least a half-a-dozen of them-- I've never stopped to count, scabbed over, covered in dried blood.  I screamed.  I screamed and screamed and finally someone came.  A nurse.  She told me to be quiet.  She told me the government was coming to get me, because I was a _mutant_.  I told her the doctors had _done this to me_.  She told me to shut up or she wasn’t going to let me go.  That she wouldn't _help me_.  


She was a mutant too.  Her name was Tonia.

Tonia had the ability to crystallize any solid matter she touched.  She liked to turn copper pennies into copper crystals and make centerpieces with them.  She made good money on the internet with her little side business.

I had tentacles sticking out the back of my skull.  To make it worse, they seemed at least _semi-_ independent.  Like an octopus’s arms.  It was bad, but at least the chronic headaches were gone.  Some mutants take code names.  She laughed and said she should call herself ‘Crystal’.  I dryly replied that that made me ‘Octopushead’.

I lived with her for six months before she ratted me out to somebody.  I don’t know how or why.  I didn’t stick around to ask.

I tried hats and hoods, but only really heavy scarves wrapped up like an old _babushka_ seemed to work.  But people got suspicious real fast.

Using some old connections I managed to get a job with a 3D printing company.  Brandon.  Brandon and I had doodled notes to each other in high school.  We’d never considered asking each other out.  It was too late now…  But he was still a nice guy and he got me an interview with his boss, Sharon.  Sharon hired me because I told her I had cancer and proved that I was still a decent artist.

Well, maybe I’m being too humble?  I used to have a free-ride scholarship for my sketch art.  But then my _brain cramps_ got ‘cured’…

So I started drawing schematics for the computer to send to the printer.  It’s a great job.  Nobody asks a lot of questions.

And I was able to trade in being the mutant ‘Tentaclehead’ for just having headaches again.

Did you know that 3-D printers can make scalp caps?  Fold down the tentacles, apply some cosmetic glue, put a wig over it… _Voila_.  The tentacles start to cramp after about three hours.  After about seven I kind of want to kill myself.

People don’t talk to me.  Sometimes I get emails full of acronyms usually.  “Short hand” for efficiency, or whatever.  Acronyms make my head hurt, but PBRT—that’s “physically based ray tracing” for the uninitiated—gives me a migraine.

It’s a joke.  PBRT is the acronym for the technology… yeah… you get it.

I wouldn’t trade my migraines in for the world.  It’s how I know it’s still _working_.  It’s how I know I’m not _a monster_.  It’s how I know I can keep my job and keep my _life_.

Some mutants are lucky.  They can go to that School for the Gifted and learn how to use their powers for good or whatever.  I don’t _have_ powers.  I have _monster limbs in my head_.

So I’ll wear my plastic scalp and my wigs and just deal with my migraines.  Modern medicine is amazing.  Take enough Aleve and the pain ebbs away to almost tolerable.

I’ve been through worse.  I’m a cancer survivor, after all.  Just ask Sharon.


End file.
